Author's Note: It looks like the end of this story will have to wait until 2014, but I hope you enjoy this chapter for now. Happy holidays!
Chapter Thirteen
"Thanks so much for coming back, Bri, I know you had plans tonight."
"That's okay, I feel like I haven't seen you in a week. You sounded serious on the phone... Is it something about the case?"
I shook my head. I felt sick to my stomach.
"Brian..."
There was no way to properly communicate this, at least not in any words that I could find, so I chose his.
"I'm having an affair with Alexandra fucking Cabot."
Breathe in. Breathe out.
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A few days later, Brian moved out of our apartment. I had been dreading that moment, probably for longer than I realized. It was the fear of being alone with my thoughts, of having no other presence in the room to drown out the demons in my head. Brian had been a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on, and a companion, someone who remained loyal to me even when I was struggling to remember who I was.
He hadn't said much, which I expected, and he did ask me if I was gay, which I also expected. But I didn't expect the pain to be so evident on his face, or for my own heart to break as it did, when I said over and over, I'm sorry, and held him in my arms.
And now, suddenly, all of the comfort and reassurance that he had given me was gone. Strangely enough, I found that the voices of discord inside me were quieter now that I was alone. Maybe it was because I was finally ready to be alone, or maybe it was the simple act of having told the truth. I felt unburdened; that I could face the world with a clear conscience.
I did not toss and turn at night, I fell asleep easily, and the nights became fewer that I woke up breathing heavily from a nightmare about Lewis, or Adams with his pale blue eyes, or some other predator committing an act of violence.
My therapist had given me a blank page of loose-leaf paper at the end of my last session. I carried it around with me for days, in my pocket, on the dashboard of my car, taped to my bedroom wall - and eventually I brought it back to the next session in sheer frustration.
I cannot be sure if it was something my therapist said, or didn't say, or if it was just the effect of time passing and my mind being perhaps clearer. But by the time the session ended, the page was no longer blank.
My thoughts flowed, if not seamlessly than at least freely, through my pen onto the page.
I continued to carry that piece of paper, placing it in various and sundry locations and wondering what on earth to do with it. There were a lot of things on my mind. There was the Adams trial to prepare for, and I still had to talk to the Captain about what had happened during Adams' arrest. I had to do it for myself, for my recovery, and for the good of the unit.
Finally, on a windy Friday morning, I took the piece of paper, now severely mangled from repeated folding and unfolding, out to my car, and put it back into the glove compartment. But then I took it out again, and clutched it in my left hand as I drove, because for some reason I wanted to be able to see it.
I drove out of the city, following the Holland tunnel into New Jersey. I took the New Jersey turnpike towards Delaware, and then, to the sound of the only reliable radio station I could find, which regrettably happened to be all country, all the time, I drove my world-weary black sedan all the way to Washington.